14 contractors directly appointed to repair roads
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The hopes of the city's residents to see long-lasting quality roads here might remain a distant prospect as the Department of Public Works has just appointed 14 contractors to repair flood- hit, damaged roads across the city without offering a tender.
Department head IGK G Suena said on Wednesday that his office had appointed the contractors in order to save time.
The decision was taken, even though past experience shows that many of the city's roads are poorly made, often damaged within just a matter of months or even weeks after repair work has been completed.
Without a tender, it is also apparent that the city administration has not been able to choose the cheapest contractors.
But Suena argued that the city would save money.
"All contractors have their own asphalt-mixing plant. Therefore, the price of the asphalt is lower (than the market price)," he told reporters, after inspecting damaged roads in the city.
The cost of repairing one square meter of road is between Rp 50,000 and Rp 350,000, depending on the amount of damage.
Suena said that the contractors had already started working on 23,537 square meters, but there was more than 1 million square meters of road in total that needed to be repaired.
The holes have been temporarily patched with small stones and sand. After the rainy season ends, they will be mixed with a layer of up to seven centimeters of asphalt, according to Suena.
Governor Sutiyoso said, after announcing the allocation of Rp 251 billion for post-flood rehabilitation programs, on Tuesday that all of the work was expected to be completed in the next couple of months.
More than Rp 118 billion has been allotted to repair damaged roads and drainage channels across the capital.
The Department of Public Works also received Rp 1.8 billion from the Ministry of Resettlement and Regional Infrastructure to repair damaged roads.
Suena said his agency would use about Rp 40 billion to repair the roads.
Long before the floods, many roads were already damaged, but the damage spread due to flooding.
Observers had criticized the low quality of the city's roads, saying that the damage would not be that serious if the roads had been built properly using quality materials in the first place.
Among the most damaged roads are Jl. Cakung-Cilincing (Cacing), Jl. A. Yani and Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan in East Jakarta, Jl. Yos Sudarso in North Jakarta, Jl. Daan Mogot in West Jakarta.
It would need Rp 10.2 billion to repair the 34,000 square meter Jl. Daan Mogot, while repair work to 24,000 square meters of Jl. Cakung-Cilincing would need Rp 7.2 billion.
Unlike other roads, which would be repaired using asphalt, Jl. Yos Sudarso would be turned into a concrete road.
The construction of roads using concrete costs Rp 700,000 per square meter, according to the head of the department's road maintenance division head, Amin Tjakramidjaja.